Opinion: In today’s pages: the Big Three beg, solar power and Mayor Villaraigosa is running, but for which job?
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Barack who? Apparently the presidential election is old news. The editorial board has already moved on to the next political race facing Angelenos and asks Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa to declare his intentions. Is he running for governor? A second term as mayor? The board writes:
‘The mayor may be genuinely be undecided. But now is the time to make up his mind--and to tell voters just what they will be getting if they elect him to a second term.’
Also in the stack, the board senses a trumped-up urgency to install city-owned solar panels on Los Angeles rooftops, and in world events, frets that the Czech Republic’s assumption of the European Union presidency is going to be a headache for President Barack Obama.
Across the way on Op-Ed, David Milne, a lecturer in American politics at the University of East Anglia, dissects the tendency of American presidents to turn to academics and political scientists for counsel and columnist Joel Stein tries to determine if the country should loan General Motors, Ford and Chrysler another $25 billion by test driving their cars. His rides in a Challenger, a Town & Country minivan and a Bentley-esque 300C were pretty sweet, but Stein concludes that taxpayers should keep their money:
“No matter how much I liked these cars, I don’t think the government should use taxpayer money to give life support to dying, poorly managed, market ignorant, technologically outdated industries other than newspapers.”